He thought about trying to telekinetically snare the grey hunter and draw it into the trap, or get its
attention by using mind magic… but his memories told him that could never work. The grey hunter
had insanely high magic resistance, and trying to affect it with magic directly was like trying to hold a
live eel… an exercise in frustration. Instead, he tried something else. As the grey hunter was passing
overhead, the simulacrum created a thick rope of magical force and tried to use it to entangle the
grey hunter and reel it in onto the platform. Unfortunately, the spider twisted its body in mid-air,
avoiding the rope by a centimeter or so. It then managed to right itself fast enough to land solidly on
its feet, landing a good distance behind the platform.
Frustrated at the way he was failing his mission, the simulacrum tried to get the grey hunter’s
attention by firing a ball of entangling ectoplasmic threads at its back. He knew from experience that
the grey hunter was strong enough to break through the spell, but, humiliatingly enough, the spell
didn’t even hit it properly. The spider reacted instantly, rolling to the side to avoid the bulk of the
spell. A few threads did manage to snag it, wrapping themselves tightly around its legs, but the grey
hunter just accelerated forward, gouging out clumps of grass from the forest floor as its legs sought
greater traction, and the threads that tried to restrain it snapped like they were made of straw. It then
sped off into the distance, zigzagging a few times to avoid the handful of overpowered magic
missiles the simulacrum had sent after it as a parting gift. Despite being overpowered and cast in
haste, the missiles were only faintly visible, existing only as a slight discoloration in the air – a
testament to Zorian’s mastery of the spell. Despite this, not only could the grey hunter evidently
perceive them without even turning around, it moved with sufficient speed and agility to defeat their
homing function and dodge them anyway. That shouldn’t even be possible, damn it!
The simulacrum stared at the dust trail left behind by the grey hunter, taking a deep breath to calm
himself (even though he was just an ectoplasmic construct and didn’t really need to breathe). The
damn spider didn’t even have the decency to turn around and pay attention to him upon being
attacked, never mind being tempted to step on the platform. It treated the simulacrum like it was just
a particularly aggressive rock or something, instead of an actual threat!
Well. His mission was certainly a failure, but maybe he could help the original in some other way. He
started running after the monster and sent a message to the original through the relay hanging
around his neck, asking for directions. The original had been observing the event through his
senses, so he didn’t have to explain much. He was immediately told to ‘observe only and stop
wasting mana for now’. Wow, what a jerk. He supposed he had been a little wasteful with their
shared mana reserves, but come on! He was just trying to salvage the situation somehow.
When he finally caught up to the grey hunter, he came upon the sight of a battlefield. Zach and
Zorian were both engaging the grey hunter, along with a group of golems (two big and slow ones for
defense and ten smaller and faster ones to act as distractions). The grey hunter hurled itself at
Zorian – the original one – only to crash into a thick multicolored plate of force and bounce off. Zach
tried to take advantage of this and impale it, sending a trio of black javelins at it, but the spider
reoriented itself in an instant, dancing around the projectiles like a leaf in the wind and hurled itself
back towards Zorian again the moment its legs touched the ground. It zigzagged across the ground,
kicking up dust and gravel and unerringly dodging every trap that had been hidden in the area
beforehand, including some purely non-magical ones like hidden pits and iron bear traps. Zach did
his best to hit it with a multitude of projectile spells, and Zorian directed his golems to block it and try
to push it into one of said projectiles or the traps it was avoiding. It was all for naught. The grey
hunter’s agility and speed was unreal, and the few times it ended up boxed in by the attacks and the
traps, it unfailingly identified which attack it could tank without getting hurt.
Zach launched a dense sphere of rock at the back of the boxed-in spider, only for it to kick back with
its rear legs like a horse and shatter the sphere of magically hardened rock like it was just loosely
packed earth. Zorian managed to hit it with a powerful incinerating ray, but all that did was burn off